Few gender differences in math abilities, worldwide study finds: “Girls around the world are not worse at math than boys, even though boys are more confident in their math abilities, and girls from countries where gender equity is more prevalent are more likely to perform better on mathematics assessment tests, according to a new analysis of international research.”

Diversity at what cost?: Lucy questions the push for diversity in FLOSS for its own sake and whether women are being pushed into it against their own interests.

In the name of awareness: Only related to Mackenzie’s New Year’s resolution in the sense that they’re both about women’s clothing, but interesting also. The “what colour is your bra?” breast cancer awareness meme on Facebook others… women who have had mastectomies!

If you have links of interest, please share them in comments here, or if youâ€™re a delicious user, tag them â€œgeekfeminismâ€ to bring them to our attention. Please note that we tend to stick to publishing recent links (from the last month or so).

8 thoughts on “Linkspamming ’round the clock (9th January, 2010)”

I’ve wondered what to do about adding carnivals to the linkspams: I’ve tended to stick to the global feminism one in order to avoid being all-carnivals-all-the-time. What do people think though? Is there some way that GF could highlight carnivals and links of general anti-oppression interest without burying geek stuff too deep?

Absolutely true. In this particular case it struck me that failing to be aware that survivors of the disease you’re raising awareness about may be especially unlikely to be unable play your game was an especial fail, but there’s plenty of assumptions about women’s bodies and preferences in it.

I’m a little bit hesitant about how to put this, because I have breasts myself and generally wear bras and moreover haven’t had cancer. Women who’ve had mastectomies for treatment or prophylaxis of cancer will each have an individual story and decision, but… in aggregate, there has been some feminist criticism (from survivors) of various aspects of reconstruction, including its normalisation and thus soft coercion by society and by medical practitioners (ie assuming you’ll reconstruct or conceal unless you state otherwise). And if one has a reconstruction I still suspect many (not all) survivors have a more complex relationship with their bra contents than “yay boobs and pretty boob housing” afterwards.

It thus still strikes me as problematic from that angle to make the bra-wearing case the “normal” state of affairs in this meme, in addition to Alexis’s point about equating “am a woman” with “have breasts and like to wear bras” for some other women.

The Diversity at what cost link has a lot of great fail in the comments. There’s a bit of a discussion going on, but it’s also full of dudes going, “See, that’s why we don’t need to care about the disparity of women in FLOSS!”

I hear the sentiment, but it’s kind of missing the point. No one is saying “Diversity at all costs” where they want to force people in who don’t want to be there. It’s more a case of trying to break down the barriers that prevent people who might be interested but see a toxic morass and refuse to swim in the pool.